If You Want The Rainbow, You Have To Deal With The Rain
by etherealmindss
Summary: Stiles seeks an overdue conversation with Malia.


Chapter One: Was It All Any More Faded After All?

Song Inspiration: _State Lines_ by Novo Amor

 _Her eyes are coffee and cayenne._

 _Sienna and sadness._

 _Whisky and wondering._

 _Honey and heartbreak._

 **STILES POV:**

Malia sits off in the corner of the expanse, long-legged and sun-kissed, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her ankles are decorated with loose threads and holistic charms that I assume are suppose to pass as jewelry, her scuffed hiking boots biting into the gravel leaving a horseshoe shaped indentation in the dirt.

She catches me standing near the overhang of the cliff but doesn't say anything, absently staring into the negative space just beyond me as if waiting for some cosmic void swallow her up. I didn't need to read her mind to know that she'd rather be anywhere but here. Anywhere but, _here with me_. It's written in the blue-black bruises under her eyes, in the way her hands shake with a slight tremor, and her shifty gaze that never quite aligns directly in my orbit. She deviates, only faintly, to the spot above my head. You wouldn't really notice the deflection unless you we're really paying attention or if you know her well enough. But Malia's a different person than she was the last time we spoke, _who's to say I know her at all now_?

My forehead feels hot from the place her eyes bore into. It's a safe bet, a hairbreadth misdirection of an arrow scratching the surface of a bullseye. Her nonchalance is intentional, calculated…. she learned it from me.

If anyone is good at ignoring people, it's Malia. A scowl sits blatantly across her lips as she fidgets with a pen caught between her perfect teeth while chewing on the cap, eventually snapping it in half with a growl. She throws her notebook on the ground and the popcorn dimple of her cheek disappears.

Her concrete eyes turn their fury on me, "What are we doing here, Stiles?" She rasps in a voice that's almost a yell that continues to rise as her eyes grow darker and cold like they're bleeding ink, "Why did you ask me to come here?"

The one way connection between my head and heart is lain threadbare; used so often that it's no longer effective. The truth is, I'm not even sure why I'm here or why I asked her to meet me.

I just- wanted to see her.

I didn't prep some premeditated speech or apology. I don't have a plan or words prepared. It's weird how much you can miss the simple presence of person; it's even more insane how they can exist in spades throughout your everyday life and you never question that lull you experience at the warmth of their hand lying mere inches from yours across the bed when you sleep, the almost unconscious way they reach for you in the dark, or even the rhythmic familiar sound of their steps following behind you on your way up the stairs to your room, a lazy scrawl of tongues and lips and fumbling fingers tearing at loose clothes like young lovers.

Even when we aren't talking, our quiet kind of love always spoke so loud. It's something no one else really understood about us at the time. We weren't always the most conventional people which made us an even more unconventional couple. Loving Malia never required training wheels, it was easy. But with easy comes negligence of danger and she possessed the type of danger that drove you mad with desire for the next dose of love as unconditional as hers. Nothing was more freeing that knowing you are loved without regard to rhyme or reason. I'm a clumsy guy and her attention had me at the mercy of a crash waiting to happen. Regardless, I never wore a helmet. I'd dive headfirst into her storm even if it killed me.

She's still staring at me blank-faced and hard-browed.

Words spill from my lips, "I heard about your track scholarship," I cough to clear my throat, scratching the back of my neck as I reach blindly into my brain grasping for something else to say. With my repertoire of unsaid things, you'd think finding words would be easy. You'd also be wrong. So I settled for, "Your dad would be really proud of you."

Malia's dad Henry had passed away three months ago from a sudden heart attack. It was obvious how much it affected her, but she wouldn't let anyone in long enough to help. She's the type that believes that if you spiral, you spiral in silence. Unless it's someone else, than she's always there even when she's not sure how to be. She'd refused Peter's offer to move in with him and warded off Lydia's insistence that she stay with her. Instead, she flip-flopped between returning to her home in the woods and crashing at Scott's house during thunderstorms. The latter made me uneasy more-so than her sleepovers in the woods. Call me a creature of habit, but I am no stranger to that uncomfortable tugging feeling in my chest when I'd see her at school the next day or on the off chance the gang would get together and she'd smell like him or still be lounging in one of his shirts she'd slept in, not that she noticed or cared how it looked to the rest of us. At first, it seemed harmless, but the more I paid attention to them; the soft, reserved smiles, the secret looks, the whispered conversations, the more it felt suffocatingly apparent that something had changed between them.

"Are we here to talk about my dad?" She mutters sardonically with an almost mocking tilt of her head. "I didn't realize you gave a damn enough to acknowledge anything that doesn't directly affect you."

My head lowers shamefully,"I should of been there."

She lets out a bitter laugh, "You're good at that" She states, looking over the edge of the cliff longingly before her gaze hits me like a hot poker in the heart, "Not being there, I mean." The sunlight catches her face and for a second I witness a glimpse of the first real sign of emotion she's shown since I showed myself but it's gone just as fast as it came. Her glare is penetrating, "It seems I never quite made it to the top of your priority list."

Malia had called me the night she walked in on her dad unresponsive on the floor of their living room. I remember feeling the phone vibrating against my desk where I'd discarded it the minute Lydia had showed up to study. One thing led to another….

I arrived outside her house, hair tousled and clothes unkempt with smudges of Lydia's red lipstick staining my shirt. Scott had called me six times until I'd finally pulled myself off of Lydia long enough to begrudgingly check the phone. Upon looking, the missed call from Malia was the first thing I saw. What followed after were the texts and calls from Scott. I don't think I'd ever felt as useless as I did in that moment. I remember racing out of my room, Lydia's questions falling on deaf ears as I hopped into the jeep and peeled out of the driveway before she could even make it down the stairs.

I shoved through the door when I made it to Malia's farmhouse on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, dodging paramedics and officers alike and there she sat; her head in her hands, knees pulled up to her chest, and a mess of tears falling like raindrops hitting asphalt down her cheeks. At the sound of my abrupt entrance, she'd looked up through her haze of tears, Scott at her side with her hands warmed between his. I'd never seen a look of disappointment so heavy. Her brown irises were damning, they screamed " _Don't come any closer. Don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't reach for my hand."_

I knew that look in her eyes because I'd been trying to avoid it all my life. Since then, I smell her in my tears everytime I'm torn from a nightmare. I feel her in my chest every morning when I wake up missing something I know I can never get back.

"Earth to Stiles." She snaps, her fingers waving in front of my face. She whispers underneath her breath, "I guess I'm not the only broken thing here."

I break out of my reverie, "I just want to talk, Malia." Sighing, my hands fidget at my sides, anxiety rolling off of me in waves so distinct I'm sure she can smell it, "I want to talk about what happened between us.

She smirks tauntingly, "By strange coincidence, I was thinking about you when you called." She says, wetting her lips in a nervous tick, "I slept out in the woods last night. I spent most of it running, as you can imagine. But for a moment, I stopped. I'm not sure what held me up, but I went and sat out beneath the moon, waiting for- something. I haven't talked about us to anyone, I never felt the need to. If I couldn't talk to you directly, why would I talk to anyone else?" She murmurs like it should be the most common sense thing in the world. She pauses for a breath before revealing one disarming detail, "But last night, I told the stars about you."

My breath hitches before swallowing the prelude of her confession, "Those stars must of done a lot of shit talking." I joke lamely, willing my eyes to meet hers, "I wouldn't blame them, of course. I'm not the easiest person to swallow."

I realize how dirty that sounded after the fact. My blush was evident, Malia's smirk indicating she'd caught the unintended innuendo but she moves past it, sparing me any teasing remarks. It wasn't exactly time sensitive to the conversation we are about to have.

Once the awkwardness subsides I take a step closer, squatting down before sitting indian style next to her while also being weary of her personal space. My index finger draws a shape in the dirt and her eyes follow the path it makes. I pause my movements and chance a glance in her direction, only for her to already be looking at me.

"What did you tell them- the stars, I mean?"

She twists her fingers together, sitting there for a while before saying anything. The silence hangs there, reminding me just how much we've grown apart in the wayward way time changes people.

She swallows hard, "I told them how I fall in love with the memory of you every night. I don't recommend it to anyone." She divulges, her eyes downcast in the dirt. Her hands take on a mind of their own, making shapes mirroring mine, "I told them how you are who you are when no one's looking." She continues to talk mindlessly without care for a filter, "I told them how I'm still searching for you in every boy I meet. How I would sleep better on your floor than I ever would in my own bed." Her head lifts to meet my perplexity, "There are ways that I learn to forget the sound of your voice. They're temporary, much like everything else, but temporary is still a span of time where everything can just be silent. And I tell myself that I'm forgetting you; look how I've forgotten you. Good job, Malia. That's progress, Malia. You're doing so well, Malia."

My head feels heavy from the weight of her words. Malia isn't one to talk much unless she has something to say, then her candor knows no roadblock. And hearing her talk like this hurts. Knowing that more than anything, she wants to erase my stain on her heart hurts in a way that catches you off guard and gives you pause.

She either ignores my inner turmoil or doesn't catch onto it but she continues talking, "...And then there are the songs I can't listen to without hearing you."

My heart leaps.

My hand shyly intertwines with hers before cementing in certainty when I run my thumb over her knuckles. And for a little infinity, everything feels like it's the way it's supposed to be. Like for just one lapse of time, we're not these people in this harrowing situation. We're just Stiles and Malia, but not here. Maybe in a universe far different than this one.

Her hands are cold, a comforting sentiment that feels familiar and new all at once. She's observing my hand laced in hers and her eyes find mine apprehensively, questions swimming innocently in the small space between us.

All defenses I thought I had melt away, "You're someone's dream, you know." I state baldly. If transparency is where we're at, then that's what I'm giving her. "And in every relationship, I think one person loves the other person more." My voice starts to shake with emotion I can't seem to contain. Her face is so hard to look at. She's so devastatingly beautiful, even now when she looks at me like a stranger. "But the thing about it is, I think for so long you felt like the outlier between us, like the one who loved harder and faster." I stumble over my next words but will them to manifest, "But the truth is, "Getting over you has been the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. And I remember kissing you for the first time in that basement in Eichen house and I remember thinking that somebody like you could really make things alright for me. But I was careless with you. I took you for granted. I shamed you. I-" I stop when I feel the first pressure of tears falling from my eyes like a leaky faucet threatening to overflow, "I hate looking at myself and realizing that I don't like what I see. I hate looking back at things I did and said and wondering why I'm such a sad sack of shit. You were always so much _more_ than me, Malia."

Malia's hair shines burnished gold like a halo of her own making as a sunset breaks through the sky. Her skin drips in what could either be sweat or sapphires but nonetheless, she's still achingly beautiful. Without a doubt in my mind, I know that's something that will never change about her.

"I don't want to be alone anymore, Stiles. But I don't want to be an active part of the world either."

My lips find the crown of her head and press a kiss there, my eyes closing as I relish in the weight of her being so close to me again. Her head moves to my shoulder as we both look out at the terrain that follows the drop of the cliff.

It's just her and I sitting here in the eclipse of new beginnings. And as oddly timed as it may seem from an outsider looking in, the black and white and shades of grey I'd been living in the past six months seemed to stretch into a canvas of technicolor.

"Then lets find a place in between. We can just sit here for a while."

Her breath tickles my neck, "Does it scare you?" She asks.

"Does what scare me?"

"Knowing that this conversation may have changed everything."


End file.
